by Bill Nugent
Article #214
In this time of energy crisis it will be useful to take a look at how oil formed. Any petroleum geologist will tell you that oil formed in deep sedimentary rock and then migrated upward to a different layer of porous sedimentary rock called reservoir rock.
Sedimentary rock, as its name suggests, was formed by particles that eroded off of a continent and were laid down by water. Often the sediments contain dead plant and animal matter. The water and dissolved minerals among the particles act as a natural cement that hardens to turn the eroded particles into solid rock. Oil forms in this sedimentary rock only if there is a sufficient amount of biological debris among the particles that were laid down.
All plant and animal life contains highly complex long chain hydrocarbons. When plants and animals are buried, crushed and heated in sediment the long chain hydrocarbons are broken down to the short chain hydrocarbons found in oil.
It is interesting to note that all petroleum contains certain chemical compounds common in both the chlorophyll of plants and hemoglobin of blood. These chemical compounds are calledporphyrins. Porphyrins are very fragile compounds that break down quickly in the presence of oxygen.
The presence of porphyrins in oil is compelling evidence that the formation of oil had to occur quickly in an environment free of oxygen. The standard old earth view that the sediments that formed oil were laid down over millions of years is thus rendered absurd.
Since plant and animal matter breaks down and rots very rapidly in the presence of oxygen any slowly forming sediment bed such as a river delta, which is oxygen rich, will yield no fossil fuels. The forest floor of a rain forest will yield no petroleum or coal or any fossils of any kind because the dead organic matter will rot away very quickly in the moist tropical heat.
It is apparent that the massive sediment beds that yield the billions of barrels of crude oil so much in demand today had to have been laid down very quickly during an extreme catastrophe. Creationists have for decades pointed to the millions of square miles of thick layers of sedimentary rock as evidence of a global catastrophe. The only catastrophe that was capable of producing such continent wide geological phenomena is the worldwide flood described in Genesis.
The worldwide flood of Noah’s day involved trillions of tons of water flowing over the continents sweeping away forests, swamps and prairies. This organic matter was mixed with huge amounts of eroded sediments and rapidly laid down over vast distances.
This slurry of sand, clay, volcanic ash and organic matter formed the ideal conditions for oil to form. It buried the organic matter deep enough to be void of oxygen and to have sufficient pressure and heat to cause oil and natural gas to form.
The oil formed in one layer of sedimentary rock and then migrated upward and pooled in more porous sedimentary rock called reservoir rock. There is usually a layer of nonporous rock above the reservoir rock that traps the oil in the reservoir. This nonporous layer of rock is called the cap rock. If there is no cap rock above the reservoir rock the oil will keep migrating until it pours out onto the surface in tar pits like we find in California, Venezuela and in certain parts of the middle East. Most oil pools are trapped by cap rock.
It is interesting to note that no oil field is completely restrained by cap rock. All oil fields leak over time. This too is proof of young earth because if the oil fields were millions of years old as secular geologists claim, the oil would have leaked out ages ago. Creationists have pointed out this fact for years. Old earth evolutionists have developed many complicated theories to explain how oil could remain trapped for millions of years. Their theories are far fetched and offer no compelling proof of their position.
Evolutionary geologists have also not adequately explained how fragile organic chemicals, such as porphyrins, could form in oil under the gradual, oxygen rich conditions they claim. The claim by evolutionists that porphyrins could remain stable in oil over millions of years also stretches credulity. By the way, all coal contains carbon 14 and this would be impossible if coal beds were millions of years old!
Creationist website www.answersingenesis.org contains articles about oil formation and many other proofs of young earth. The earth was created within the biblical timeframe of thousands, not billions of years.
The duty of an objective scientist is go where the facts lead. The facts of petroleum geology clearly point to young earth and to the global catastrophe which was the biblical flood of Noah’s day.
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